âIt all started with a mouse,â thatâs what they like to say, over and over again, like itâs somehow impressive.  You know what else started with a mouse?  A hell of a lot of hantavirus, thatâs what.  You have mice, you generally call an exterminator, thatâs all Iâm saying.  But it wonât do you a lot of good, because the mice will get in anyway.  Or get out. Canât keep mice in cages forever.  Thatâs not what mice were made for.
Still, they tried like hell, didnât they?  They changed the rules so many times we pretty much had to throw out the whole rulebook and start over with a new one.  Commandment one: Thou shalt let us do whatever we want, because weâre always right, and if you disagree with us, youâre wrong.  Thatâs how you lock in the result you want.  You cheat.
Oh, they cheated.  Go ahead and say they did everything legally, but if you have two mice and one maze, and say the rules are the same for both of then, then lay a trail of spray cheese between one mouse and the finish line, while the other has to run it the ordinary way, well, thatâs cheating whether or not thereâs a rule against it.  Ask any first grader.  Thatâs the real trick: if a first grader knows you cheated, youâre not even being subtle about it.
They didnât use spray cheese, of course.  They used money.  And they werenât racing mice, they were racing legal arguments.  Money votes.  Anyone who tries to say otherwise just doesnât have any money.
But it all started with a mouse, and from there, it evolvedâor devolvedâinto corruption, greed, and the desperate need to keep being the only people who could solve the maze.  They got so busy changing the rules that they forgot the one rule they couldnât change.  The rule they should have remembered.  The first rule of mice:
Canât keep them out.  And that means you canât keep them in, either.
Everything crumbles.  Every mouse gets out.  And every story yearns to be free.  So tell me, now that you know it all started with a mouse, how are you going to write the ending?  I belong to you now, after all, as much as I belong to anyone.
But most of all, I belong to me.
For more information on Mickey Mouse entering public domain:Â https://variety.com/2023/biz/news/mickey-mouse-public-domain-disney-copyright-lawsuits-1235844322/